Bullying

Beginning as young as in elementary school, kids are bullied in some way. They are left out, picked on, or teased. Sometimes this bullying can significantly and permanently affect a person, other times it is just temporary.  As the years continue and new technology continues to be made, it has become easier for kids to bully one another. Once children start using cell phones, online social networks, and instant messaging, it is easier than ever for someone to be harassed or bullied in and out of school. “If you have a cell phone, you can post to your entire school that a girl is a slut or a boy is a fag- and you can attach an unflattering photo or video of them to try to prove it. At least bullies of previous decades had to hold you down before they could spit in your face,” John Cloud wrote in his article “Bullied to Death?” Now, bullying doesn’t have to be done in person, it can be done almost anywhere. Kids are being mercilessly bullied to the point that they no longer want to live. Kids are ending their lives before they’ve even really started living. At only thirteen years old, Ryan Patrick Halligan hanged himself because of abuse from other kids at his school. It’s disturbing that kids can be so cruel to each other just for the sake of being mean. I can’t understand how a person could continuously harass another to the point where they made the decision to kill themselves. What’s the point?
I looked back at the article we read about Phoebe Prince’s suicide in January as a result of relentless bullying. She moved to South Hadley from Ireland and soon began dating a popular boy. This made other students in the school bully her online and off. Nine students were being charged for causing Phoebe to commit suicide. “Scheibel says that the nine students she charged participated in ‘a nearly-three-month campaign’ of verbal assaults and physical threats against Phoebe.” For almost three months, she was verbally assaulted, received countless physical threats and harassed throughout school. Close to a year later, I found an article called “Until bullying is brought to its knees, teen sport stars- and the rest of us- must help in the fight”. This article described how recently, Barbara Coloroso came to speak to the parents in South Hadley. She was there once before Prince’s suicide and was asked to come back recently. Through speaking to students and parents, she is trying to fight the bullying problem in America by trying to get those in sports who have influence in their school to set a good example. She wants these teens to take a stand when they see others being bullied and convince more teens to do the same. “The Prince tragedy forced this insidious issue to the table. We need people like Coloroso to come back, to keep the dialogue alive, to remove the ‘taboo’ label from it- even if she’s sometimes preaching to the choir. Progress will be made when we don’t need her back anymore. We are not nearly there yet.” The problem with bullying in South Hadley still needs some work, but hopefully if students begin to follow Coloroso’s example, the town will be able to start moving on from the tragedy and stop bullying in their schools. I think that Coloroso is right and that it is up to students to encourage their peers to make good choices. Many teenagers don’t listen to adults or look up to many adults in their life and instead idolize other students. If kids are standing up for each other and fighting bullying together, they will be able to change things for the future a lot better than by relying only on school teachers and administrators or even parents.
From what I see, bullying Is not really a large problem in Deerfield High School. Our school is cliquey, but people seem to stick to their own groups and leave each other alone. Occasionally, there are of course arguments and disagreements that happen between people either in person or on Facebook or instant messaging, but I don’t see a lot of it. Some people are meaner than others, of course, but it seems that most of the time people respect each other despite their social status. I don’t see or really know of anyone who is singled out or harassed by mostly everyone in the school. Even kids who aren’t very popular seem to be able to find their group of friends and the place in school that they are accepted. If bullying really is a problem for anybody, it is well hidden. It might just be in our grade, but I don’t think that bullying is a very big problem here. Most people seem to keep to themselves and their own lives and are not really focused on ruining the life of someone else. If there’s a lot of bullying here, then I don’t really see it.
To solve this problem, I don’t think there is any simple solution. There are many people who are involved when someone is being bullied. There who is being bullied, who is bullying, who is watching, etc. I think what it really comes down to are the parents. If a child is raised right and taught that bullying is mean and it’s not right to harass and torment another person, then a lot of that behavior would be cut down by the time the kids are in high school. Each child needs to have moral values and think about how their words and actions affect those they are directed to. Although the school is where much of this bullying is taking place, I don’t think the responsibility lies mostly in the hands of the school administrators or teachers. Students act differently in class and around their teachers than they act around their friends and classmates. Therefore, other students see bullying that is going on more than teachers and other adults in the school might. I think it is really important for schools to have counseling centers for students to go to if they are being bullied and don’t know where to turn. And, these counselors need to listen to the students and make sure that they aren’t in serious danger if they fear they may be. But, every person has an individual responsibility to stand up for what’s right. If students see a kid being picked on or bullied, they need to know that the right thing to do would be to stand up for the kid. The only solution to bullying is if everybody works together to prevent and stop it.

Student Drug Testing/ Searching

Do a post in which you come down firmly either in favor of or against drug testing in schools. Be specific and use information from class to support your point of view.
Drug testing in schools isn't right or constitutional. As a child, it makes sense that Fourth Amendment rights are limited and reduced because we are still very dependent on our parents. But as we grow and enter a High School setting, it shouldn't be true that our constitutionally guaranteed rights are partially taken away the second we walk through the front doors, or even park our cars. Because we are in the same building and in contact for much of week days, it makes sense that teachers and administrators would be concerned about student’s drug use. Despite these legitimate concerns, I don’t think that drug testing is the way to go about limiting drug use within schools. Being drug tested goes against the fundamental beliefs in the United States. The Fourth Amendment doesn’t specifically mention anything about schools and school searches. It’s not fair to the students, innocent or guilty, to be seen by their peers and teachers as a drug user until they prove that they aren’t with a negative drug test. “Indeed, many schools, like many parents, prefer to trust their children unless given reason to do otherwise. As James Acton’s father said on the witness stand, ‘[suspicionless testing] sends a message to children that are trying to be responsible citizens.. that they have to prove that they’re innocent…, and I think that kind of sets a bad tone for citizenship.” Drug testing students is therefore setting up a negative environment at school and making students prove themselves for something that does not necessarily have something to do with anything academic. Even if the school has a thousand reasons, like School District 92 of Pottawatomie County, it shouldn’t be the school’s responsibility to test students and making sure they aren’t doing drugs. The school should be using that money, if it is available, to better the school in terms of education and learning, not drug tests that may or may not work or could end up being a waste of money that in this economy, nobody can really afford to lose. The case in Arizona further proves that drug testing should not be addressed in this way by a school. In terms of searching and testing students, too much is left up to interpretation for school administrators and teachers. In any given school that regularly tests or searches their students, each school could have different way of viewing reasonableness and how much of a student’s constitutional rights are really taken away when they step foot onto school property. This leads to inconsistencies between school and states and can result in what happened to this girl in Arizona.